I accumulated two telescopes in the 90's and like all good hobbies you start small and work your way up. Shown below is my Meade 10" and 16". These telescopes are completely computer controlled so I can sit in my living room and point them around the sky.

Below is my 44" diameter telescope mirror on the grinding machine. It is 6 inches thick and weights about 900 lbs. This mirror is very deep in the middle as you can see on the right. This makes it particularly hard to polish perfectly and we use a special interferometer to measure the surface to one millionth of an inch. The glass will be coated with a silver coating after its perfect. When its finished we will use it to search for extrasolar planets.

The smallest but hardest working telescope. This is a 300mm camera lens attached to a high performance astronomical CCD. It is used to look for exoplanets crossing in front of their stars which dims the light just enough to be detected. It is now in daily use in the dome behind me.